He glanced up at her through grateful tears.
“Poor useless Alexis,” he replied under his breath, “who cumbers the earth with his wasteful presence. What are you going to do with him?” His eyes held the plaintive appeal of a lost child.
Anne moved away hastily.
“Spank him and send him to bed,” she laughed, uneasy at his tone.
A sudden and more angry blast shook the house. Anne went to the window and drew up the shade. She looked out into the uproarious night. The rain beat against the panes like waves washing over a porthole. Anne shivered.
“I had almost forgotten the storm while you were playing, hadn’t you? Come, see how weirdly the trees are behaving!”
He strolled up behind her and they stood, looking out into the blackness. Beaten beneath leaden shafts of rain, torn by a diabolic wind, the placid forest had become an inferno of twisting branches. Tossing limbs writhed in seeming agony under each shrieking gust.
“They look like a company of maddened demons,” Anne shuddered and pulled down the shade. “I could almost believe it is they and not the wind, which whistle and scream. It reminds one of a witch’s Sabbath!”
She went to the table, gathered up a book or two, and prepared to go upstairs, when the brusque whirr of the telephone stopped her.
“What can that be?” she cried completely startled. She ran across the room and took down the receiver.